@Brighternow - Television is so freaking brilliant. Have you watched the videos that go along with it? I've had to stop the Cantaloupe drip a couple times, but I'm happy to be back on it.
@Brighternow - That's one of them. If you go to http://www.florentghys.com/ you can watch all of them. It's really neat to see the actual video broadcasts that he sampled from spliced in with his own performances. Thanks, I'll hopefully find some time to stick around again.
Ashley Bathgate - cello Robert Black - bass Vicky Chow - piano and keyboards David Cossin - drums and percussion Mark Stewart - guitars Ken Thomson - clarinets
Composers:
Julia Wolfe, Florent Ghys, Michael Gordon, Christian Marclay, David Lang, Tyondai Braxton, Jóhann Jóhannsson, Todd Reynolds, Steve Reich, Bryce Dessner, Mira Calix and Anna Clyne
- "Field Recordings, the new multimedia project from the Bang on a Can All-Stars, is as rooted in mystery and experimentation as it is in the collaborative spirit; in the words of composer David Lang, “It’s a kind of ghost story. We asked composers from different parts of the music world to find a recording of something that already exists — a voice, a sound, a faded scrap of melody — and then write a new piece around it.”
In the capable hands of the All-Stars, Field Recordings taps into film, found sound and obscure audio-visual archives, bridging the gap between the seen and the unseen, the present and the absent, the past and the future. Concert performances have featured radical new video projections, several of which appear on the bonus DVD, while the 12-track CD consists of commissioned music by some of the most inquisitive and unconventional composers in any genre, from indie art-rock (Nick Zammuto/The Books, Tyondai Braxton/Battles) to electronica (Mira Calix) to post-classical (Michael Gordon, David Lang, Julia Wolfe) to the art world (Christian Marclay)".
- "For more than a century, recorded sound has permeated every corner of our lives. Bartok and Kodaly took recording devices into the hills of central Europe and changed modern music forever; rock and roll got its lineage from artists revealed to the world by the Lomaxes, Seegers and other intrepid archivists. Hip-hop culture democratized sampling, and helped reshape popular music into a form of musique concrète, mixing the voices and rhythms of the past with the sound of machinery and electronics.
For our own Field Recordings, we asked the composers to go into the field of recorded sound itself — to find something old or record something new, and to respond with their own music, in dialogue with what they found. Using archival audio, found sound and video, Field Recordings builds a bridge between the seen and the unseen, the present and the absent, the past and the future."
- "Based on a one-page story by Ambrose Bierce, the difficulty of crossing a field is a joint collaboration in musical theater between composer David Lang and playwright Mac Wellman that recounts, in the words of a recent New York Times performance review, “a strange disappearance and what the neighbors have to say about it.”
Mixing arias with spoken text and emotional melodies with tense drama, the story takes place in 1854 near Selma, Alabama, where a planter named Williamson has vanished without a trace while crossing a field. The original production was staged in March 2002 at the Theater Artaud in San Francisco, starring Julia Migenes as the wife of Williamson, and Tony-award winning singer Anika Noni Rose as the leader of the slave chorus, with music performed onstage by the Kronos Quartet.
This recording of the difficulty of crossing a field was tracked and produced by Lawson White, in partnership with Beth Morrison Projects, and features the Harlem String Quartet and an A-list of of New York City’s established and emerging talent in opera and theater, including Beverly O’Regan Thiele, Laquita Mitchell and Jay O. Sanders."
- "Mac Wellman’s recent work includes 3 2’s; or AFAR at Dixon Place in October 2011, The Difficulty of Crossing a Field (with composer David Lang) at Montclair in the fall of 2006 (and elsewhere more recently), and 1965 UU for performer Paul Lazar, and directed by Stephen Mellor at the Chocolate Factory in the fall of 2008. He has received numerous honors, including NEA, Guggenheim, and Foundation of Contemporary Arts fellowships. In 2003 he received his third Obie, for lifetime Achievement. In 2006 his third novel, Q’s Q, was published by Green Integer, and in 2008 a volume of stories, A Chronicle of the Madness of Small Worlds, was published by Trip Street Press as well as a new collection of plays The Difficulty of Crossing a Field from Minnesota Press. His books of poetry include Miniature (2002), Strange Elegies (2006), Split the Stick (2012) from Roof Books, and Left Glove (2011), from Solid Objects Press. His novel Linda Perdido won the 2011 FC2 Catherine Doctorow Prize for Innovative Fiction. He is Distinguished Professor of Play Writing at Brooklyn College."
^ Already sitting comfortably as my "Album of the Year", in fact. It's a sometimes funny, other times unsettling expansion of Bierce's story, which can be read here: http://www.online-literature.com/bierce/1995/ - actually, rereading the Bierce with the opera firmly in my head reveals what a great job Wellman did with the libretto.
- And the Julia Wolfe album is out now, yet another strong contender for the prestigious title as Sir BN's album of the year and winner of the 2015 Purlitzer Prize.
Haunting, poignant and relentlessly physical, Julia Wolfe’s Anthracite Fields is a lovingly detailed oratorio about turn-of-the-20th-century Pennsylvania coal miners, and a fitting recipient of the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Music. NPR Music’s Tom Huizenga describes the piece as “...almost a public history project and a music project at the same time,” which hints at the work’s universal appeal.
Weaving together personal interviews that she conducted with miners and their families, along with oral histories, speeches, rhymes and local mining lore, Wolfe sought to honor the working lives of Pennsylvania’s anthracite region. “It’s not necessarily mainstream history,” she told NPR shortly after she received word of winning the Pulitzer. “The politics are very fascinating—the issues about safety, and the consideration for the people who are working and what’s involved in it. But I didn’t want to say, ‘Listen to this. This is a big political issue.’ It really was, ‘Here’s what happened. Here’s this life, and who are we in relationship to that?’ We’re them. They’re us. And basically, these people, working underground, under very dangerous conditions, fueled the nation. That’s very important to understand.”
Featuring the always adventurous Bang on a Can All-Stars and the renowned Choir of Trinity Wall Street, Anthracite Fields merges multiple styles with classical themes—from the deep, ambient sweep of the opening movement “Foundation” (with the All-Stars’ Mark Stewart wrenching waves of keening sound from his electric guitar) to the high-energy work-song mood of “Breaker Boys.” In the sociopolitically poignant “Speech”, inhumane mining conditions are addressed with Stewart taking the lead in haranguing rock vocals, while “Appliances” reflects with mechanical denouement on the economic results of coal power.
- "On the 40th anniversary of the release of Brian Eno’s electronic ambient masterpiece Discreet Music, Toronto’s classical Contact ensemble, led by artistic director and percussionist Jerry Pergolesi, weighs in with a modern arrangement that harks back to the adventurous experimentalism of the original.
In Contact’s version, acoustic and electric instruments (cello, violin, soprano saxophone, guitar, double bass, vibraphone, piano, flute and gongs) take the place of Eno’s EMS synthesizer, channeling the underlying melodies of the piece until the ensemble itself becomes a kind of “looping apparatus,” as Pergolesi describes it. “My hope is that this recording pays homage to an influential piece of music and fulfills its own purpose as, in Eno’s words, ‘not something intrinsic to certain arrangements of things – to [a] certain way of organizing sounds – but actually a process of apprehending that we, as listeners, could choose to conduct. Music is something your mind does.’”
- "Contact is a contemporary music ensemble and concert producing organization that highlights collaborations with other media, established and emerging composers, performances in alternative spaces, and outreach to underserved communities that stress diversity, collaboration and accessibility.
Contact has firmly established itself as one of Canada’s leading interpreters of the music of our time. Under the direction of percussionist and founder Jerry Pergolesi, Contact has performed at new music festivals including the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (UK), Open Ears Festival of Sound (Kitchener), and the Bang On A Can Marathon (New York).
In addition to concert productions, Contact Contemporary Music presents INTERsection, a twelve-hour music marathon at Yonge-Dundas Square and Music From Scratch, its annual summer workshop for youth."
- My goodness ! - How could I forget about this one:
Paul D. Miller is probably most well-known under his “constructed persona” as DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid. He has recorded a huge volume of music and collaborated with a wide variety of musicians and composers, among them Iannis Xenakis, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Kronos Quartet, Pierre Boulez, Steve Reich, Yoko Ono, Thurston Moore and many others.
Conceived as a remix and reimagination of director D.W. Griffith’s infamously racist 1915 silent film The Birth of a Nation, Rebirth of a Nation, recorded with Kronos Quartet, is a controversial and culturally significant project that examines how “…exploitation and political corruption still haunt the world to this day, but in radically different forms.” Originally commissioned in 2004 by the Lincoln Center Festival, Spoleto Festival USA, Weiner Festwochen, and the Festival d’Automne a Paris, the project was Miller’s first large-scale multimedia performance piece, and has been performed around the world, from the Sydney Festival to the Herod Atticus Amphitheater, more than fifty times.
“We need more than ever to see the context that early cinema offers us," Miller says. "As my old friend Saul Williams likes to say: Another World Is Possible. A remix of a film as deeply important and problematic as The Birth of a Nation reminds us that many of these issues still linger with us at every level.”
- "Is a composer, multimedia artist and writer. His written work has appeared in The Village Voice, The Source, Artforum and The Wire amongst other publications. Miller's work as a media artist has appeared in a wide variety of contexts such as the Whitney Biennial; The Venice Biennial for Architecture (2000); the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, Germany; Kunsthalle, Vienna; The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and many other museums and galleries. His work New York Is Now has been exhibited in the Africa Pavilion of the 52 Venice Biennial 2007, and the Miami/Art Basel fair of 2007. Miller's first collection of essays, entitled Rhythm Science came out on MIT Press 2004. His book Sound Unbound, an anthology of writings on electronic music and digital media is a best selling title for MIT Press.
Miller's deep interest in reggae and dub has resulted in a series of compilations, remixes and collections of material from the vaults of the legendary Jamaican label, Trojan Records. Other releases include Optometry (2002), a jazz project featuring some of the best players in the downtown NYC jazz scene, and Dubtometry (2003) featuring Lee 'Scratch' Perry and Mad Professor. Another of Miller's collaborations, Drums of Death, features Dave Lombardo of Slayer and Chuck D of Public Enemy among others. He also produced material on Yoko Ono's recent album Yes, I'm a Witch.
DJ Spooky's Rebirth of a Nation was commissioned in 2004 by the Lincoln Center Festival; Spoleto Festival USA; Weiner Festwochen; and the Festival d'Automne a Paris. It was the artist's first large-scale multimedia performance piece, and has been performed in venues around the world, from the Sydney Festival to the Herod Atticus Amphitheater, more than fifty times. The DVD version of Rebirth of a Nation was released by Anchor Bay Films/Starz Media in 2008.
DJ Spooky's multimedia performance piece Terra Nova: Sinfonia Antarctica was commissioned by BAM for the 2009 Next Wave Festival; The Hopkins Center/Dartmouth College; UCSB Arts & Lectures; Melbourne International Arts Festival; and the Festival dei 2 Mondi in Spoleto, Italy. With video projections and a score composed by DJ Spooky, performed by a piano quartet, Terra Nova: Sinfonia Antarctica is a portrait of a rapidly transforming continent.
In August 2009, DJ Spooky visited the Republic of Nauru in the Micronesian South Pacific to do research and gather material for The Nauru Elegies, a collaboration with artist/architect Annie Kwon, first presented at Experimenta in Melbourne, Australia in February 2010. In January 2010. Miller was commissioned by German radio to write the composition Terra Nullius.
In 2011, Miller released a graphic design project exploring the impact of climate change on Antarctica through the prism of digital media and contemporary music compositions that explored the idea of "acoustic portraits" of Antarctica entitled The Book of Ice (Thames and Hudson/Mark Batty Publisher). The Book of Ice is includes an introduction by best selling author and quantum physicist Brian Greene, author, The Elegant Universe. The Book of Ice is a multi-media installation, a music composition for string quartet, and a book, and it has been included in the 2011 Gwangju Biennial, by Korean architect Seung H-Sang and Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei. Miller is currently a contributing editor to C-Theory and the Arts Editor of Origin Magazine, which focuses on the intersection of art, yoga and new ideas."
- "No one inhabits a Steinway quite like Australian pianist Lisa Moore, which is probably why so many modern composers have invited her to interpret their music. Known for her “beautiful and impassioned” approach, as the New York Times described one of her performances, Moore brings a fully charged sense of rhythm, mysticism and adventure to The Stone People, her first full-length recording for Cantaloupe Music. It follows in the footsteps of Moore’s three-part series of acclaimed EPs for the label — Seven (2009), Lightning Slingers and Dead Ringers (2011) and Stainless Staining (2012). As Pulitzer-winning composer and Bang on a Can co-founder David Lang reveals in the album’s liner notes, the project takes its name from the opening piece by another Pultizer winner, John Luther Adams. “John’s music is ruggedly elemental,” Lang writes, “using very restrained materials as a way of probing some of our most fundamental human truths. Who we are. Where we are. How we relate to each other. How we relate to the natural world. His pieces are stark explorations of humankind in its most elemental state, and this CD brings together, for the first time, his complete acoustic music for solo piano.” Among other firsts, the disc includes two works for piano by Julia Wolfe (2015’s Pulitzer winner!), as well as newly recorded pieces by Martin Bresnick, Missy Mazzoli and Kate Moore. By turns meditative, mysterious, tumultuous and tender, The Stone People presents Lisa Moore at the height of her transformative powers."
The New York Times writes, “Lisa Moore, an Australian pianist long based in and around New York, has always been a natural, compelling storyteller.” TimeOut New York describes her as “the wonderfully lyrical pianist.” Moore has nine solo discs (Cantaloupe, Orange Mountain Music, Tall Poppies) ranging from Leoš Janáçek to Philip Glass. She has made more than 30 collaborative recordings for a wide range of labels, including Sony, Nonesuch, DG, BMG, New World, ABC Classics, Albany, New Albion, Starkland and Harmonia Mundi. Music for Eighteen Musicians (Harmonia Mundi), with Ensemble Signal, made the New York Times’ 2015 “Best Classical Music Recordings” list. Moore collaborates with a large and diverse range of musicians, ensembles and artists—groups such as the London Sinfonietta, the Bang on a Can All-Stars, Steve Reich Ensemble, New York City Ballet, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Australian Chamber Orchestra, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, and the American Composers Orchestra. She is a member of Grand Band, Ensemble Signal, TwoSense and the Paul Dresher Double Duo. Festival guest appearances include Lincoln Center, BAM Next Wave, Crash Dublin, Graz, Rome, Turin, Aspen, Tanglewood, Huddersfield, Paris d'Automne, Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong, BBC Proms, Southbank, Uzbekistan, Leningrad, Moscow, Lithuania, Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra, Israel and Warsaw. Crowned by the New Yorker as “New York's queen of avant-garde piano,” Moore was the founding pianist for the Bang On A Can All-Stars (1992-2008) and winner of Musical America's 2005 Ensemble of the Year Award. She has worked with composers ranging from Iannis Xenakis, Elliot Carter, Philip Glass and Frederic Rzewski to Ornette Coleman, David Lang, Meredith Monk, Thurston Moore, Hannah Lash and Martin Bresnick. Lisa Moore is a Steinway artist. She has performed in some of the world’s greatest concert halls—La Scala, the Musikverein, the Sydney Opera House, Carnegie Hall and the Royal Albert Hall. As a concerto soloist, Moore has performed with the London Sinfonietta, Australian Chamber Orchestra, Wesleyan Orchestra and Sumarsam Gamelan, Albany, Sydney, Tasmania, Thai and Canberra Symphony Orchestras, Philharmonia Virtuosi and the Queensland Philharmonic, under the batons of Bradley Lubman, Richard Mills, Reinbert de Leeuw, Pierre Boulez, Jorge Mester, Angel Gil-Ordonez and Edo de Waart. As an artistic curator, Moore produced Australia's Canberra International Music Festival 2008 Sounds Alive series, importing artists from around the world for ten days of events at the Street Theatre. Lisa Moore grew up in Australia and London. She studied piano at the Sydney Conservatorium, the University of Illinois, Eastman School of Music, SUNY Stonybrook and in Paris with Yvonne Loriod. Moore won the silver medal in the 1981 Carnegie Hall International American Music Competition, and moved to New York City in 1985. She teaches at Wesleyan University and at Yale’s summer Norfolk Festival New Music Workshop, and is a regular guest at the Australian National Academy of Music in Melbourne.
I should really go to the London show as I haven't even been to that newish venue yet. However all I can think of is engineering work on the travel home on a Sunday evening. Truly I am turning into an old man!
A bit of a strange post. Prompted by the Lesley Flanigan recording, I searched for Extatic Music Festival at WQXR and found this brilliant recording available for streaming.
By some strange coincidence (?) something began downloading and it happened to be a shitload of strange files including the mp3 of this fantastic live recording. - Includes a most fascinating interview with Alvin Lucier.
Maybe I or others will find out how it happened, or maybe not.
ETA: There's also the premier performance of Daniel Wohl's Holographic piece. (a wholeheartedly recommended album) - And Shara Worden is a guest - Awesome !
Bang On A Can's 2014 People's Commissioning Fund Concert
Highlights ATM: Revolution 9 (Beatles) and Poème Électronique (Edgar Varèse) - by far the best version I've ever heard.
- "Terror is often the first response to unfamiliarity, and some of the boldest forays into the unfamiliar have launched under the banner of Modernism. Listening to new sounds can be akin to watching a horror movie—with ears covered rather than eyes—but given time, what was once disturbing can become intriguing.
Alarm Will Sound ventures into the outer reaches of propriety on Modernists. The album is bookended by tributes to two masterworks of modern recorded sound that have been arranged for the ensemble: “Revolution 9” by The Beatles (arranged by Matt Marks) and “Poème électronique” by Edgard Varèse (arranged by Evan Hause). Each piece is strange and otherworldly in its own way, with a provocative history of upsetting as many, if not more, listeners than they have won over.
The 23-piece band led by Alan Pierson, AWS Artistic Director, also performs work written for the ensemble by Wolfgang Rihm, Charles Wuorinen, AWS pianist John Orfe, and Augusta Read Thomas (whose “Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour” features vocal performances by Kirsten Sollek and Caleb Burhans).
As the Denver Post has noted, “Alarm Will Sound has grabbed the future of classical music and made it now—merging styles, erasing boundaries, championing experimentation and obviously having fun along the way.” This joyful and adventurous spirit fuels the beating heart of the Modernists album."
- "Alarm Will Sound has established a reputation for performing
demanding music with energetic skill. ASCAP recognized their
contributions to new music with a 2006 Concert Music Award for "the
virtuosity, passion and commitment with which they perform and champion
the repertory for the 21st century." Their performances have been
described as "equal parts exuberance, nonchalance, and virtuosity" by
the London Financial Times and as "a triumph of ensemble playing" by the San Francisco Chronicle. The New York Times says Alarm Will Sound is "the future of classical music" and "the very model of a modern music chamber band."
The versatility of Alarm Will Sound allows it to take on
music from a wide variety of styles. Its repertoire ranges from European
to American works, from the arch-modernist to the pop-influenced. The
group fosters close relationships with contemporary composers and has
commissioned and premiered pieces by Steve Reich, David Lang, Anthony
Gatto, Cenk Ergün, Aaron Jay Kernis, Michael Gordon, Augusta Read
Thomas, Stefan Freund, Wolfgang Rihm, Payton MacDonald, John Orfe, Gavin
Chuck, Dennis DeSantis and Caleb Burhans. They are the resident
ensemble at the annual Mizzou International Composers Festival, held
each July in Columbia, MO focusing on world premiere performances of
music by emerging composers. The group itself includes many
composer-performers, which allows for an unusual degree of insight into
the creation and performance of new work. . . . ."
Australian composer Kate Moore has worked with a wide range of ensembles, including Slagwerk Den Haag, Amsterdam Sinfonietta, The Amsterdam Cello Octet, The New European Ensemble, Alarm Will Sound, the Bang on a Can All-Stars and many more. On her Cantaloupe Music debut with All-Stars cellist Ashley Bathgate, she brings a uniquely vivid, contemplative and almost spiritual voice to these six new compositions for the cello.
Moore and Bathgate first met back in 2009; since then, the two have collaborated, whenever timing and schedules would allow, on a wide-focus musical excursion that uncovers the full range of the instrument. Both artists have a deep familiarity with the major repertoire, from Elgar to Dvorak, Fauré, Bach and Beethoven, and over the years, they have developed and sculpted their own original language — Bathgate, through the subtlety and color of her playing, and Moore through the idiomatic and dynamic vocabulary that she brings to the fore as a composer.
Stories for Ocean Shells channels what Moore likes to refer to as a shared experience. “Being at a similar place in our lives really added to that,” Moore says. “It meant that we could immediately see where the other was coming from. We’re both rebels from an intense background playing the cello, and we both wanted to break out, with the aim to create something new that we could call our own. So this project is about tapping into that vast energy around us.”
- "Kate Moore is a composer of new music. She creates worlds of sound for acoustic and electroacoustic media and writes instrumental music, concert music, sound installations and more. Moore specialises in creating surprising performance scenarios that feature virtuosic instrumentalists and musicians set amidst unusual and alternative performance circumstances.
Active on the international scene her works have been performed in venues including Carnegie Hall, The Sydney Opera House and The Concertgebouw andinternational festivals including The Holland Festival, The Sydney Film Festival, The Made Festival Umea – Sweden, The Bang on a Can Marathon – World Financial Center, ISCM World Music Days – Sydney, The International Gaudeamus Muziekweek, November Music, The Sonic Festival NY, MATA Festival, Carlsbad festival of Music CA, Canberra International Chamber Music Festival. Her works appear on major labels including Cantaloupe, ECM, Tall Poppies and Ensemble Klang.
She has worked with ensembles including Slagwerk Den Haag, Amsterdam Sinfonietta, The Amsterdam Cello Octet, The New European Ensemble, Nieuw Ensemble, Alarm Will Sound, The Bang on a Can All-Stars, The Calder Quartet, The Grand Band, Twosense, Duo X88, Ensemble Offspring, Synergy Percussion, Ensemble Klang, Asko|Schoenberg Ensemble, Trio Scordatura, The Song Company, Ensemble Lucilin, Ensemble Syntonia, Orkest De Ereprijs among others.
She holds a doctorate from The Sydney Conservatorium of Music (University of Sydney 2008-2012), a masters from The Royal Conservatorium of The Hague (2002-2004), a Bachelor of Music with honours from The Canberra School of Music/ Australian Centre for Arts and Technology (Australian National University 1998-2001). She has worked as a freelance researcher for The University of Amsterdam."
- "American cellist Ashley Bathgate has been described as an “eloquent new music interpreter” (New York Times) and “a rising star of her instrument” (Albany Times Union) who combines “bittersweet lyricism along with ferocious chops”(New York Magazine). Her “impish ferocity," “rich tone,” and “imaginative phrasing” (New York Times) have made her one of the most sought after performers of her time. The desire to create a dynamic energy exchange with her audience and build upon the ensuing chemistry is a pillar of Bathgate’s philosophy as a performer. Her affinity to dynamism drives Bathgate to venture into previously uncharted areas of ground-breaking sounds and techniques, breaking the mold of a cello’s traditionally perceived voice. Collaborators and fans alike describe her vitality as nothing short of remarkable and magical for all who are involved. She is a member of the award winning, internationally acclaimed sextet, Bang on a Can All-Stars, as well as two chamber groups of which she is a founding member: TwoSense and Bonjour.
Most recently Bathgate premiered a new Cello Concerto by Australian composer Kate Moore with the ASKO|Schönberg ensemble at the Gaudeamus Festival in Utrecht, NL. She subsequently recorded an album of Moore’s solo cello works which will be released in June 2015 on Cantaloupe Music. This spring also brings the world premiere of What Moves You, a collaborative performance project with jookin’ dance sensation Lil Buck at the Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston, NC. Bathgate is currently collaborating with the Brooklyn-based composer collective Sleeping Giant, who is writing her a six-movement suite for solo cello to premiere next year on the Metropolis Resident Artist Series in NYC. Other upcoming commissions include works by Michael Gordon, Erdem Helvacioglu, Jascha Narveson, Todd Reynolds, and Neil Rolnick. Bathgate’s radio/television appearances include performances on WQXR FM’s Young Artist Showcase, WQXR’s Meet the Composer podcast with Nadia Sirota, NPR’s Performance Today, WYNC’s New Sounds Live, SiriusXM, Late Night and The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. Her recorded work can be found on Albany Records, Cantaloupe Music, Innova Recordings, La-La Land Records, Naxos, Nonesuch and Starkland.
Originally from Saratoga Springs, NY, Bathgate began her cello studies with the late Rudolf Doblin, principal cellist and assistant music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic in the 1950’s. After his passing, she resumed her tutelage with Ann Alton at Skidmore College. From there she continued on to study at Bard College with Luis Garcia-Renart (B.M.) and then at the Yale University School of Music with renowned cellist, Aldo Parisot (M.M. & A.D)."
- And here is some more Kate Moore music:
- "Kate Moore (1979) presents music that feels simultaneously familiar and strange. It explores the transformation of musical material through a landscape of memory and reference. In Debris & Alchemy allusions of 60s folk/pop, the experimental avant-garde, sacred music and hard-core gothic rock are splattered with the sounds of strange objects, shards of porcelain, car engine springs and garbage cans. Pairing church organ with an eccentric mix of saxophones and electric guitar conjures a wilderness of crumbling Gothic architecture and decaying rusty cars."
Ashley Bathgate - cello and voice
Florent Ghys - alto bass and voice
James Moore - guitars and voice
Eleonore Oppenheim - bass and voice
Owen Weaver - drums/percussion and voice
When Michael Gordon’s
Timber, scored for six amplified wooden 2-by-4s, premiered in 2009, it
brought the physicality and endurance of percussion performance to
another level. Now newly recorded by Mantra Percussion and reworked by
an A-list of producers and DJs, Gordon’s deep exploration into the
extreme possibilities of rhythm gets the full electronic treatment on
Timber Remixed. Featuring the studio touches of Squarepusher, Oneohtrix
Point Never, Tim Hecker, Hauschka, Johann Johannsson, Ikue Mori, and
many more, the double-CD set includes Mantra’s live performance of
Timber from the 2014 Bang on a Can Marathon.
- "David Lang is one of the most highly-esteemed and performed American
composers writing today. His works have been performed around the world
in most of the great concert halls.
Lang's simple song #3,
written as part of his score for Paolo Sorrentino's acclaimed film
YOUTH, received many awards nominations in 2016, including the Academy
Award and Golden Globe.
His the little match girl passion won the
2008 Pulitzer Prize in music. Based on a fable by Hans Christian
Andersen and Lang’s own rewriting of the libretto to Bach’s St.
Matthew’s Passion, the recording of the piece was awarded a 2010 Grammy
Award for Best Small Ensemble Performance. Lang has also been the
recipient of the Rome Prize, Le Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, and
Musical America's 2013 Composer of the Year.
Lang’s tenure as
2013-14 Debs Chair Composer's Chair at Carnegie Hall saw his
critically-acclaimed festival, collected stories, showcase different
modes of storytelling in music. This season Lang sees the premiere of
his chamber opera Anatomy Theatre at LA Opera, the 4th annual
performance of the little match girl passion to the Metropolitan Museum
of Art, the UK premieres of the national anthems with the London
Symphony and mystery sonatas at Wigmore Hall, as well as residencies at
the Strings of Autumn Festival in Prague, the Winnipeg New Music
Festival, and Baldwin-Wallace College.
Lang’s music is used
regularly for ballet and modern dance around the world by such
choreographers as Twyla Tharp, Susan Marshall, Edouard Lock, and
Benjamin Millepied, who choreographed a new piece by Lang for the LA
Dance Project at BAM in 2014. Lang’s film work includes the score for
Jonathan Parker’s (Untitled), the music for the award-winning
documentary The Woodmans, and the string arrangements for Requiem for a
Dream, performed by the Kronos Quartet. His music is also on the
soundtrack for Paolo Sorrentino’s Oscar-winning La Grande Bellezza and
the director’s upcoming film, Youth. In addition to his work as a
composer is Professor of Composition at the Yale School of Music.
Lang
is co-founder and co-artistic director of New York's legendary music
collective Bang on a Can. His music is published by Red Poppy Music
(ASCAP) and is distributed worldwide by G. Schirmer, Inc.
Comments
Robert Black - bass
Vicky Chow - piano and keyboards
David Cossin - drums and percussion
Mark Stewart - guitars
Ken Thomson - clarinets
- "For more than a century, recorded sound has permeated every corner of our lives. Bartok and Kodaly took recording devices into the hills of central Europe and changed modern music forever; rock and roll got its lineage from artists revealed to the world by the Lomaxes, Seegers and other intrepid archivists. Hip-hop culture democratized sampling, and helped reshape popular music into a form of musique concrète, mixing the voices and rhythms of the past with the sound of machinery and electronics.
BoaC/TJM
http://bangonacan.bandcamp.com/album/marathon-15-mixtape
- "Based on a one-page story by Ambrose Bierce, the difficulty of crossing a field is a joint collaboration in musical theater between composer David Lang and playwright Mac Wellman that recounts, in the words of a recent New York Times performance review, “a strange disappearance and what the neighbors have to say about it.”
Mixing arias with spoken text and emotional melodies with tense drama, the story takes place in 1854 near Selma, Alabama, where a planter named Williamson has vanished without a trace while crossing a field. The original production was staged in March 2002 at the Theater Artaud in San Francisco, starring Julia Migenes as the wife of Williamson, and Tony-award winning singer Anika Noni Rose as the leader of the slave chorus, with music performed onstage by the Kronos Quartet.
This recording of the difficulty of crossing a field was tracked and produced by Lawson White, in partnership with Beth Morrison Projects, and features the Harlem String Quartet and an A-list of of New York City’s established and emerging talent in opera and theater, including Beverly O’Regan Thiele, Laquita Mitchell and Jay O. Sanders."
Cantaloupe Music - Emusic
- "Mac Wellman’s recent work includes 3 2’s; or AFAR at Dixon Place in October 2011, The Difficulty of Crossing a Field (with composer David Lang) at Montclair in the fall of 2006 (and elsewhere more recently), and 1965 UU for performer Paul Lazar, and directed by Stephen Mellor at the Chocolate Factory in the fall of 2008. He has received numerous honors, including NEA, Guggenheim, and Foundation of Contemporary Arts fellowships. In 2003 he received his third Obie, for lifetime Achievement. In 2006 his third novel, Q’s Q, was published by Green Integer, and in 2008 a volume of stories, A Chronicle of the Madness of Small Worlds, was published by Trip Street Press as well as a new collection of plays The Difficulty of Crossing a Field from Minnesota Press. His books of poetry include Miniature (2002), Strange Elegies (2006), Split the Stick (2012) from Roof Books, and Left Glove (2011), from Solid Objects Press. His novel Linda Perdido won the 2011 FC2 Catherine Doctorow Prize for Innovative Fiction. He is Distinguished Professor of Play Writing at Brooklyn College."
It's a sometimes funny, other times unsettling expansion of Bierce's story, which can be read here: http://www.online-literature.com/bierce/1995/ - actually, rereading the Bierce with the opera firmly in my head reveals what a great job Wellman did with the libretto.
Haunting, poignant and relentlessly physical, Julia Wolfe’s Anthracite Fields is a lovingly detailed oratorio about turn-of-the-20th-century Pennsylvania coal miners, and a fitting recipient of the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Music. NPR Music’s Tom Huizenga describes the piece as “...almost a public history project and a music project at the same time,” which hints at the work’s universal appeal.
Weaving together personal interviews that she conducted with miners and their families, along with oral histories, speeches, rhymes and local mining lore, Wolfe sought to honor the working lives of Pennsylvania’s anthracite region. “It’s not necessarily mainstream history,” she told NPR shortly after she received word of winning the Pulitzer. “The politics are very fascinating—the issues about safety, and the consideration for the people who are working and what’s involved in it. But I didn’t want to say, ‘Listen to this. This is a big political issue.’ It really was, ‘Here’s what happened. Here’s this life, and who are we in relationship to that?’ We’re them. They’re us. And basically, these people, working underground, under very dangerous conditions, fueled the nation. That’s very important to understand.”
Featuring the always adventurous Bang on a Can All-Stars and the renowned Choir of Trinity Wall Street, Anthracite Fields merges multiple styles with classical themes—from the deep, ambient sweep of the opening movement “Foundation” (with the All-Stars’ Mark Stewart wrenching waves of keening sound from his electric guitar) to the high-energy work-song mood of “Breaker Boys.” In the sociopolitically poignant “Speech”, inhumane mining conditions are addressed with Stewart taking the lead in haranguing rock vocals, while “Appliances” reflects with mechanical denouement on the economic results of coal power.
- BOAC - Cantaloupe Music - Emusic.
Notes from the composer:
I grew up in a small town in northeastern Pennsylvania – Montgomeryville.
When we first moved there the road was dirt and the woods surrounding the
house offered an endless playground of ice skating trails and natural forts.
At the end of the long country road you’d reach the highway – Route 309.
A right turn (which was the way we almost always turned) led to the city,
Philadelphia. A left turn on Rte. 309 (which we hardly ever took) lead to coal
country, the anthracite field region. I remember hearing the names of the
towns, and though my grandmother grew up in Scranton, everything in that
direction, north of my small town, seemed like the wild west.
When Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia commissioned me to write a new
work for chorus and the Bang on a Can All-Stars, I looked to the anthracite
region. Anthracite coal is the diamond of coal – the purest form. At the turn
of the century the anthracite fields of Pennsylvania became the power source
for everything from railroads to industry to heating homes. But the life of
the miner was difficult and dangerous. I had been immersed in issues of the
American worker – composing Steel Hammer, an evening length art-ballad on
the legend of John Henry. For Anthracite Fields I went deeper into American
labor history – looking at both local and national issues that arose from coal
mining. I went down into the coal mines, visited patch towns and the local
museums where the life of the miners has been carefully depicted and commemorated.
I interviewed retired miners and children of miners who grew
up in the patch. The text is culled from oral histories and interviews, local
rhymes, a coal advertisement, geological descriptions, a mining accident index,
contemporary daily everyday activities that make use of coal power,
and an impassioned political speech by John L. Lewis, the head of the United
Mine Workers Union.
My aim with Anthracite Fields is to honor the people who persevered and
endured in the Pennsylvania Anthracite coal region during a time when the
industry fueled the nation, and to reveal a bit about who we are as American
workers.
In the first movement, Foundation, the singers chant the names of miners that
appeared on a Pennsylvania Mining Accident index 1869-1916. The list is
sadly long. I chose only the Johns with one syllable last names in alphabetical
order. The piece ends with a setting of very colorful multi-syllabic names.
The miners were largely from immigrant families and the diversity of ethnicity
is heard in the names. At the center of Foundation is text from geological
descriptions of coal formation.
Breaker Boys follows next. There were many boys working in the Pennsylvania
coal mines. The younger ones worked in the breakers, which were large,
ominous structures. The coal would come running down chutes of the breakers.
The boys had the painful job of removing debris from the rush of coal.
The central rhyme of this movement, Mickey Pick-Slate, is from the anthracite
region. Others were adapted from children’s street rhymes. In the center
of this movement are the words of Anthony (Shorty) Slick who worked as a
breaker boy. The interview is taken from the documentary film, America and
Lewis Hine directed by Nina Rosenblum. Hine worked for the National Child
Labor Committee, and served as chief photographer for the WPA.
Speech is the third movement. The text is adapted from an excerpt of a speech
by John L. Lewis, who served as president of the United Mine Workers of
America. Lewis was an impassioned spokesperson for the miners and fought
hard-won battles for safer working conditions and compensation.
The fourth movement, Flowers, was inspired by an interview with Barbara
Powell, daughter and granddaughter of miners. She grew up in a Pennsylvania
patch town and had many stories to tell about her family life. She never
felt poor. She had an amazing sense of community. Barbara talked about how
everyone helped each other. Her grandparents helped to raise her. They
made special dishes and grew vegetables and canned. In one interview Barbara
said, “We all had gardens,” and then she began to list the names of
flowers.
The last movement, Appliances, ties the new to the old. I was struck by John
L. Lewis’ line “those of us who benefit from that service because we live in
comfort.” Our days are filled with activities that require power. Even today
coal is fueling the nation, powering electricity. When we bake a cake or grind
coffee beans we are a part of the industrial cycle. The final words are taken
from an advertising campaign for the coal powered railroad. In 1900 Ernest
Elmo Calkins created a fictitious New York socialite, Phoebe Snow. It used
to be a dirty business to ride the railroad. But with the diamond of coal, her
“gown stayed white from morn till night on the road to Anthracite.”
– Julia Wolfe.
http://www.anthracitefields.com/wp/
- "On the 40th anniversary of the release of Brian Eno’s electronic ambient masterpiece Discreet Music, Toronto’s classical Contact ensemble, led by artistic director and percussionist Jerry Pergolesi, weighs in with a modern arrangement that harks back to the adventurous experimentalism of the original.
In Contact’s version, acoustic and electric instruments (cello, violin, soprano saxophone, guitar, double bass, vibraphone, piano, flute and gongs) take the place of Eno’s EMS synthesizer, channeling the underlying melodies of the piece until the ensemble itself becomes a kind of “looping apparatus,” as Pergolesi describes it. “My hope is that this recording pays homage to an influential piece of music and fulfills its own purpose as, in Eno’s words, ‘not something intrinsic to certain arrangements of things – to [a] certain way of organizing sounds – but actually a process of apprehending that we, as listeners, could choose to conduct. Music is something your mind does.’”
Cantaloupe music - Emusic
- "Contact is a contemporary music ensemble and concert producing organization that highlights collaborations with other media, established and emerging composers, performances in alternative spaces, and outreach to underserved communities that stress diversity, collaboration and accessibility.
Contact has firmly established itself as one of Canada’s leading interpreters of the music of our time. Under the direction of percussionist and founder Jerry Pergolesi, Contact has performed at new music festivals including the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (UK), Open Ears Festival of Sound (Kitchener), and the Bang On A Can Marathon (New York).
In addition to concert productions, Contact Contemporary Music presents INTERsection, a twelve-hour music marathon at Yonge-Dundas Square and Music From Scratch, its annual summer workshop for youth."
Paul D. Miller is probably most well-known under his “constructed persona” as DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid. He has recorded a huge volume of music and collaborated with a wide variety of musicians and composers, among them Iannis Xenakis, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Kronos Quartet, Pierre Boulez, Steve Reich, Yoko Ono, Thurston Moore and many others.
Conceived as a remix and reimagination of director D.W. Griffith’s infamously racist 1915 silent film The Birth of a Nation, Rebirth of a Nation, recorded with Kronos Quartet, is a controversial and culturally significant project that examines how “…exploitation and political corruption still haunt the world to this day, but in radically different forms.” Originally commissioned in 2004 by the Lincoln Center Festival, Spoleto Festival USA, Weiner Festwochen, and the Festival d’Automne a Paris, the project was Miller’s first large-scale multimedia performance piece, and has been performed around the world, from the Sydney Festival to the Herod Atticus Amphitheater, more than fifty times.
“We need more than ever to see the context that early cinema offers us," Miller says. "As my old friend Saul Williams likes to say: Another World Is Possible. A remix of a film as deeply important and problematic as The Birth of a Nation reminds us that many of these issues still linger with us at every level.”
- Cantaloupe Music - Emusic
Paul D. Miller aka DJ SPOOKY That Subliminal Kid
- "Is a composer, multimedia artist and writer. His written work has appeared in The Village Voice, The Source, Artforum and The Wire amongst other publications. Miller's work as a media artist has appeared in a wide variety of contexts such as the Whitney Biennial; The Venice Biennial for Architecture (2000); the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, Germany; Kunsthalle, Vienna; The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and many other museums and galleries. His work New York Is Now has been exhibited in the Africa Pavilion of the 52 Venice Biennial 2007, and the Miami/Art Basel fair of 2007. Miller's first collection of essays, entitled Rhythm Science came out on MIT Press 2004. His book Sound Unbound, an anthology of writings on electronic music and digital media is a best selling title for MIT Press.
Miller's deep interest in reggae and dub has resulted in a series of compilations, remixes and collections of material from the vaults of the legendary Jamaican label, Trojan Records. Other releases include Optometry (2002), a jazz project featuring some of the best players in the downtown NYC jazz scene, and Dubtometry (2003) featuring Lee 'Scratch' Perry and Mad Professor. Another of Miller's collaborations, Drums of Death, features Dave Lombardo of Slayer and Chuck D of Public Enemy among others. He also produced material on Yoko Ono's recent album Yes, I'm a Witch.
DJ Spooky's Rebirth of a Nation was commissioned in 2004 by the Lincoln Center Festival; Spoleto Festival USA; Weiner Festwochen; and the Festival d'Automne a Paris. It was the artist's first large-scale multimedia performance piece, and has been performed in venues around the world, from the Sydney Festival to the Herod Atticus Amphitheater, more than fifty times. The DVD version of Rebirth of a Nation was released by Anchor Bay Films/Starz Media in 2008.
DJ Spooky's multimedia performance piece Terra Nova: Sinfonia Antarctica was commissioned by BAM for the 2009 Next Wave Festival; The Hopkins Center/Dartmouth College; UCSB Arts & Lectures; Melbourne International Arts Festival; and the Festival dei 2 Mondi in Spoleto, Italy. With video projections and a score composed by DJ Spooky, performed by a piano quartet, Terra Nova: Sinfonia Antarctica is a portrait of a rapidly transforming continent.
In August 2009, DJ Spooky visited the Republic of Nauru in the Micronesian South Pacific to do research and gather material for The Nauru Elegies, a collaboration with artist/architect Annie Kwon, first presented at Experimenta in Melbourne, Australia in February 2010. In January 2010. Miller was commissioned by German radio to write the composition Terra Nullius.
In 2011, Miller released a graphic design project exploring the impact of climate change on Antarctica through the prism of digital media and contemporary music compositions that explored the idea of "acoustic portraits" of Antarctica entitled The Book of Ice (Thames and Hudson/Mark Batty Publisher). The Book of Ice is includes an introduction by best selling author and quantum physicist Brian Greene, author, The Elegant Universe. The Book of Ice is a multi-media installation, a music composition for string quartet, and a book, and it has been included in the 2011 Gwangju Biennial, by Korean architect Seung H-Sang and Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei. Miller is currently a contributing editor to C-Theory and the Arts Editor of Origin Magazine, which focuses on the intersection of art, yoga and new ideas."
- More DJ Spooky at Emusers
- And something to look forward to:
releases February 12, 2016
- Cantaloupe Music - Emusic
Bang on a Can Spring 2016 Mixtape
Bang on a Can All-Stars in Europe
April 16: Copenhagen
April 17: London
April 20: Rotterdam
April 21: Amsterdam
April 23: Rotterdam
Dammit ! - I can't go.
Prompted by the Lesley Flanigan recording, I searched for Extatic Music Festival at WQXR and found this brilliant recording available for streaming.
By some strange coincidence (?) something began downloading and it happened to be a shitload of strange files including the mp3 of this fantastic live recording.
- Includes a most fascinating interview with Alvin Lucier.
Maybe I or others will find out how it happened, or maybe not.
ETA: There's also the premier performance of Daniel Wohl's Holographic piece.
(a wholeheartedly recommended album)
- And Shara Worden is a guest - Awesome !
Bang On A Can's 2014 People's Commissioning Fund Concert
Brilliant stuff from AWS . . .
Highlights ATM: Revolution 9 (Beatles) and Poème Électronique (Edgar Varèse) - by far the best version I've ever heard.
- Cantaloupe Music - Emusic
Out of this world cello performances from:
- Cantaloupe Music - Emusic
- And here is some more Kate Moore music:
Kate Moore - Klepsydra (2009)
https://katemoore.bandcamp.com/
- And something to look forward to:
Ashley Bathgate - cello and voice
Florent Ghys - alto bass and voice
James Moore - guitars and voice
Eleonore Oppenheim - bass and voice
Owen Weaver - drums/percussion and voice
OUT OCTOBER 28 on Cantaloupe Music
When Michael Gordon’s Timber, scored for six amplified wooden 2-by-4s, premiered in 2009, it brought the physicality and endurance of percussion performance to another level. Now newly recorded by Mantra Percussion and reworked by an A-list of producers and DJs, Gordon’s deep exploration into the extreme possibilities of rhythm gets the full electronic treatment on Timber Remixed. Featuring the studio touches of Squarepusher, Oneohtrix Point Never, Tim Hecker, Hauschka, Johann Johannsson, Ikue Mori, and many more, the double-CD set includes Mantra’s live performance of Timber from the 2014 Bang on a Can Marathon.
(releases October 28, 2016)